Good Samaritan Society - Lakota

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this place also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. Not many facilities performed better in this area. Inspection scores are tied to pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this area typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This facility was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe. This means that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to resident safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily something to panic about.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our nursing score is mostly associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to the third area, this facility also received a grade of B+ for its short-term care rating. This is an above average score in this category. With our short-term care score, we strive to forge a meaningful measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess the facility's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The last area we graded was long-term care, where this facility was awarded a grade of B. This actually was this facility's worst area. A nursing home could be doing a lot worse when their weakest score still beats out most other nursing homes. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 98.4127 percent of its patients, which is far higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.